“I’m glad to see you, Leigh, and have you with me,” he said to me, affably—although he didn’t offer to shake hands, some distance lying between the position of a skipper and an apprentice. “You’re lucky to be just in time, though, for we’re all ready to sail as soon as the tide serves for us to cross the outer bar and be off. Got all the papers ready, Mr Tompkins?”
“Yes, captain,” replied the agent. “Here they are; Leigh and Mr Pengelly have just signed them.”
“All right then. If you’ll come along with me over to the Marine Superintendent’s office,” said Captain Billings, to us two, “we’ll have the signatures witnessed to these indenture articles; and then the thing’ll be all settled, and the boy can come aboard at once.”
“Heave ahead, my hearty,” replied Sam. “We’re both ready and willing;” and thereupon we all adjourned to the presence of the responsible official of the port entrusted with the supervision of all matters connected with the mercantile marine, in whose presence I was formally bound apprentice to the captain of the Esmeralda.
These preliminaries duly arranged, Sam Pengelly had some further dealings of a private nature with the captain and agent, in which the chinking of gold coin had apparently a good deal to do; and then he and I, at the skipper’s invitation, taking our seats in a boat that was lying by the side of the jetty started off for the Esmeralda, whither Sam had previously directed one of the schooner’s men to have my sea-chest removed while we went on to the agent’s.
Really, I could not explain the mingled feelings of hope, joy, pride, and satisfaction, that had filled my breast at the thought that I was really going to sea, and having the darling wish of my heart at last gratified—my contentment much increased by my overhearing a whispered comment of my new captain to Sam Pengelly, that I “wasn’t a pigeon-toed landsman, thank goodness!” He said he could see that from the manner in which I put my feet on the side cleats, as I got out of the boat and swung myself up to the gangway.
“Now at length,” thought I, speaking of myself in Sam’s fashion, as if I were some other person—“Martin Leigh you are going afloat at last!”
And, although I was only an humble reefer in the merchant service, whose spick-and-span uniform of blue serge and gold-banded cap had never yet smelt salt water to christen them, I felt as proud on first stepping “on board the Esmeralda” as Nelson must have done, when standing on the quarter-deck of the Victory and seeing her close with the Spanish fleet immediately after his famous signal was displayed—“England expects every man this day to do his duty!”